Dealing With The Past –
True Stories Market
Selected stories Nobody’s Children Nobody’s Children is an autobiographical story about Sara Velaga, who grew up without a father from the day she was born in 1994. Her father, Siniša Velaga, Captain of the Armed Forces, left her mother during their exile in Banja Luka, and never got back in touch with her. Sara received nothing but a surname from her father – a reminder that you can be “someone’s” even when you are “nobody’s.” Sara returned to Jajce, where she lives as a national minority and persists in trying answer the question: Why did you leave us? Contact for the story: Sara Velaga velagasara@gmail.com
Generation 70/72 In March 1990, the generation born between 1970 and 1972 went to serve in the Yugoslav People’s Army (YPA). Recruitment continued until April 1991. This is the story of a cohort whose fate was determined in 1990, when they were conscripted to serve in the YPA. By April 1992, more than one hundred had been killed. Today, those who survived still suffer the psychological consequences. This is a story about families who fought to save their sons, as well as those who hid military documents in Sarajevo in December 1991, thus preventing the continuation of conscription. Contact for the story: Melina Kamerić melina.kameric@gmail.com
Jadranka Reihl-Kir In the words of Drago Hedl, Josip Reihl-Kir was “an unusually decent man, with polite manners completely atypical for chiefs of police in Osijek until then.” In June 1991, Reihl-Kir addressed the Osijek Assembly with the words, “While I am the chief of the Osijek-Baranja Police Administration, there will be no war between Serbs and Croats in this area.” He already had reason to fear for his own safety. He warned his superiors about this and asked to be transferred to Zagreb. Instead of going to Zagreb, on 1 July, he headed to Tenja to negotiate with the rebel Serbs in the village. On his way back to Osijek, at the Croatian police checkpoint in Tenja, Josip Reihl-Kir was assassinated. The perpetrator, Antun Gudelj, was a member of the reserve police force and a subordinate of Reihl-Kir. Using a Kalashnikov he had recently received from the chief himself, Gudelj fired sixteen bullets into the car Riehl-Kir was riding in, also killing local officials Goran Zobundzija and Milan Knezević, leaving Mirko Tubić as the lone survivor. Widowed, Jadranka Reihl-Kir fought for nineteen years to discover the truth about the murder in court. The day after the murder, Josip Boljkovac, who had approved Reihl-Kir’s transfer, was removed from the police station. After fleeing the country, Gudelj was convicted in absentia in 1994, and pardoned two years later. After being extradited to Croatia, Antun Gudelj was again sentenced in 2008 to a single prison sentence of twenty years. In 2009, the Supreme Court upheld the first-instance verdict.
18 I DEALING WITH THE PAST 2021
